Harper Lee to release To Kill A Mockingbird sequel called Go Set a Watchman | Books | Entertainment | Daily Express BOOKS Harper Lee to release To Kill A Mockingbird sequel - 55 years after first book published ICONIC author Harper Lee will be releasing a sequel to her world famous novel To Kill A Mockingbird. 16:30, Tue, Feb 3, 2015 | UPDATED: 23:04, Tue, Feb 3, 2015 GETTY Harper Lee will be releasing a sequel to her book To Kill A Mockingbird The book, called Go Set A Watchman, is her second book and will be released 55 years after her first novel was published. It features To Kill A Mockingbird character Scout Finch as an adult who returns to the fictional southern town of Maycomb. The book will be released on July 14 by Ms Lee's publisher Penguin Random House. The reclusive author, 88, said she had thought the manuscript for the book had been lost for decades. She said she wrote Go Set A Watchman in the 1950s but her publisher was fascinated by flashbacks in the book to Scout's childhood.

GETTY Harper Lee's second book will be called Go Set A Watchman I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years Harper Lee Ms Lee then wrote a book from the perspective of young Scout which went onto be known as To Kill A Mockingbird. She said: "It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. "My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout’s childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. "I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told." Ms Lee had set aside the manuscript for Go Set A Watchman after the publication of To Kill A Mockingbird. She said she was delighted when her friend Tonja Carter discovered it attached to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird. Ms Lee said: "After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication.

"I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years." UNIVERSAL To Kill A Mockingbird was made into a film starring Gregory Peck The surprise announcement saw Ms Lee's flock to Twitter to post their delight at seeing a sequel to the beloved novel. The terms 'Harper Lee' and 'Go Set A Watchman' both trended on the site after the news emerged. One fan wrote: "A new book by Harper Lee, with Scout as a grown up no less. I'd say that'll be worth the 50 year wait." While another added: "New (old) Harper Lee novel on the way. Fantastic news for all writers and fans of great writing!" Her first novel, which has been taught at schools around the world, was released when she was just 34-years-old in 1960. The book, which won the Pultizer prize, dealt with issues of racism and led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It was made into an Oscar winning film with Gregory Peck two years later.

Most read in Books Harper Lee's new novel Go Set a Watchman is a bolt from the blue | Books | The Guardian Harper Lee Harper Lee's new novel Go Set a Watchman is a bolt from the blue With To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee arrived a fully fledged novelist – then after this brilliant start, disappeared from view. A second book will find many eager readers Harper Lee in 1963, a year before she stopped speaking to the press. Photograph: AP Harper Lee Harper Lee's new novel Go Set a Watchman is a bolt from the blue With To Kill a Mockingbird, Lee arrived a fully fledged novelist – then after this brilliant start, disappeared from view. A second book will find many eager readers Tuesday 3 February 2015 12.50 EST Last modified on Wednesday 4 February 2015 08.25 EST Share on Messenger Close One rarely gets a high-voltage shock in the literary world, a jolt from the blue.

But the news has emerged that 88-year-old Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, has discovered an earlier and unpublished novel of hers, Go Set a Watchman, and that it will be published soon. It’s not a sequel but one that she actually wrote first. It deals with many of the same beloved characters, such as Scout and Atticus Finch, 20 years after the events that occur in her famous – and only – novel, referring back to them in passing. Apparently she submitted this first novel to an editor who suggested she might think about trying again, focusing squarely on those flashbacks to life in Maycomb, Alabama, during the Great Depression. Lee decided this editor had a good idea, and she wrote To Kill a Mockingbird , which appeared in 1960, when the author was 34. It was a career-ending debut – but not in the usual sense. Lee won the Pulitzer prize for fiction: an astonishing bit of precocity. The novel sold extremely well and became a classic Hollywood film only two years after its publication. It has since sold millions and millions of copies and is a staple of the American school curriculum.

In fact, my youngest son graduated from high school two years ago in Vermont, and he recently complained that he’d been “forced” to read To Kill a Mockingbird in each of his final six years of school. That’s overkill, perhaps, but the book remains a model of its kind, a vivid tale that unfolds over three years (1933 to 1935) in a dusty and exhausted little village in Alabama. Harper Lee to publish new novel, 55 years after To Kill a Mockingbird Read more The story centers on Scout, a tomboy, and her brother Jem. They have a dreamy friend called Dill, who comes in the summers to stay with his aunt. Dill was loosely modelled on Harper Lee’s dear childhood friend, the writer Truman Capote . (And there have always been rumors that Capote had some hand in writing it, which seems unlikely, as the style is so very different from anything by him.) Scout’s widowed father, played by Gregory Peck in the film, is an honourable man, and a lawyer as well – a stunning coincidence.

Indeed, I knew one young man who became a lawyer just so that he could stand in the shoes of Atticus Finch, who seeks justice for Tom Robinson, a local black man accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell. It’s a fairly simple novel, a tragic story of racial politics in the old south. (And it’s especially sad that these politics still seem to haunt the US, as seen with the recent killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson .) Lee is, indeed, a gifted novelist, who seems to have been born whole, without needing to “develop” in the way most young writers do. I’ve read the novel many times, and always marvel at its stylistic force, its sensuousness, its quiet generosity (very like Dickens) – each character is so fresh and distinct. I also admire its narrative fluency, as events give way to events in a seamless fashion. The voice of young Scout combines with the voice of the older Scout, with the tension between past and present quietly maintained, employed to render irony and perspective. The child’s innocence is always undermined, however quietly, by the elder Scout’s edge of wry wisdom.

This dual perspective makes it possible for a child of Scout’s age to have some grip on the unfolding horror of the trial at hand. Harper Lee returns with a new novel – let the alternative title race begin Read more Lee has a gift for weaving the fabric of smalltown life, with tangible period details, an acute feeling for the colors, the sounds, the smells of everyday living. There is a sly humor in Scout’s voice that has always been attractive for young readers, and the stark racial drama of the rape and the palpable injustice of the community has very little in the way of ambiguity. This book intentionally teaches a blunt lesson, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a relief, in fact, that the novel is so well written, with a persuasive subtlety that, more than half a century later, still can move a jaded reader like myself, who might prefer to read Toni Morrison or William Faulkner (I do) but still finds something to love in To Kill a Mockingbird, which I first read in high school only a few years after its first publication. Lee remains a woman of mystery.

Not unlike JD Salinger , who disappeared from view and ceased to publish novels after a brilliant start, Lee simply stopped giving interviews to the press in 1964. She ignored the literary world entirely, going about her business, whatever that was, for the rest of her life. Of course she had no need to make a living: To Kill a Mockingbird made her rich. However, it’s important to note that not every writer feels compelled to write book after book: I dip my eyes shamefully to the floor as I write this. But each writer is different, and there is simply no point in saying that one way is better than another way. It’s important to celebrate a fine American novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, which has introduced half a century of American students to the pleasures of fiction. It has always offered countless schoolteachers an opportunity to discuss the issue of racism and injustice in the United States with young people who may not have had the opportunity to think directly about such things. It seems unlikely that the publication of another novel by Harper Lee at this stage will make a big difference to anyone, although it will certainly find curious eyes, like my own, eager to read it. And why not?

Lawyer says author is a ‘strong, independent woman’ upset about reports of being duped and having to defend her decision-making about long-awaited sequel Published: 8 Feb 2015 Go Set a Watchman – Read & Survive “Every man’s island, Jean Louise, every man’s watchman, is his conscience. There is no such thing as a collective conscious.” ― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman Go Set a Watchman is a novel by Harper Lee published in 2015. After 55 years we now have a sequel to famous To Kill a Mockingbird. I read ‘To Kill a Mockingbird first time in 8th grade and I loved it, it was warm, deep and humorous even if it dealt with serious issues like rape and racial injustice. Writing was beautiful and Lee’s thoughts in that novel “Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.” & “I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.” can speak for themselves. Go Set a Watchman left me confused. I finished reading it only few days after Lee had passed and I somehow had very high hopes for it.

In general, I enjoyed the story and I was happy to read again about Maycomb and all the characters: Jean Louise, Atticus, Jem, Calpurnia… again. However, Go Set a Watchman seemed more like a draft of a novel than actual novel. And I think that was what I didn’t like. Everyone had told me it was a “sequel” and how great it was and there was all this hype around it. And true, writing was amazing and there were many great lines I have quoted here in this post, yet it was just a draft! There was NO depth I wanted there to be. “Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.” ― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman The fact that Lee wrote this before she wrote ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ and how it is just a draft of it explains a lot. Also, in my opinion, it shows how much she developed as writer and how much, how work she put into writing, or let’s say editing ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.

“A man can condemn his enemies, but it’s wiser to know them.” ― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman I MISSED LEE’S WRITING SO MUCH and her great mind too. That might sound weird but with books, I think we always get into authors’ heads. However, this just isn’t a sequel (well…except plotwise & characterwise maybe) and it’s in no way a finished !! or ready novel and I don’t know why they ever published something like this claiming it was. I think, if publishers would have marketed this as a companion book or some kind of a “bonus material”, it wouldn’t have disappointed so many readers or have received so many negative reviews. 3/5 stars Tips Naturally, you MUST read To Kill a Mockingbird first if you haven’t already, because this won’t make any sense to you + if it’s been a long time, you should have a glimpse at To Kill a Mockingbird to remember what happened. 2. Don’t expect a sequel! Or finished novel! Expect a draft-ling that will make you love To Kill a Mockingbird and Harper Lee even more.

Seriously I wonder if publishers and marketers had read these books or did they just think of the money they’ll make. 3. Every single Harper Lee fan should read this! Why? See tip #2. 4. If you have a possibility and you’re English is good enough, read it in language it was written. This Alabama dialect makes it more authentic in both of novels. 5. It’s not too long, about 300 pages. It might be difficult to get started but it quickly sucks you in. “If you did not want much, there was plenty.” ― Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman Have you read Go Set a Watchman? What did you think of it? Go Set A Watchman · Harper Lee · Book Review Go Set A Watchman is a mixed bag of nostalgia and end-of-childhood awfulness · Book Review · The A.V. Club Share Tweet Harper Lee’s new novel, the much anticipated and much-written about Go Set A Watchman, is a difficult book. A lot of questions still surround it. Is it actually a sequel to Lee’s classic novel To Kill A Mockingbird, or just a curious appendix to that work?

Did the writer, who famously vowed never to publish another book after her first, even want it published, or was its release the product of a literary executor taking advantage of the author’s advanced age? Maybe the most pressing question for readers is: How should one read this book? Some commentators and critics believe that Watchman should be read as a singular work, apart from Mockingbird, in spite of the fact that both books deal with the same characters and settings, some 20 years apart. This approach is tempting. Atticus Finch, one of the most beloved characters in the history of English literature, who in Mockingbird appears as a stalwart champion of racial equality, is depicted in Watchman as an aging segregationist, paranoid about the civil rights movement. For many, tracking this drastic change is less like watching a character develop than a sort of literary trauma. To put as much distance as possible between the two Atticuses has immediate appeal. As an admirer of To Kill A Mockingbird, I hate to see as great a character as Atticus Finch undergo such a bizarre upheaval.

Likewise, I understand and sympathize with the argument that the events of Go Set A Watchman cannot be thought of as contiguous with those of the timeline of Lee’s other book, that it offers an alternate timeline with totally different characterizations. But having read Watchman, I don’t think this argument holds water. The raw material of the two books is the same, though what Lee does with that material in either book is drastically different. Like all the characters from To Kill A Mockingbird that reappear here, the Atticus Finch depicted in this new book is the same one we all read about in middle school. The mannerisms, the speech patterns, and physical attributes all correspond. When the reader learns that Atticus’ views have changed with age, those changes are clearly drawn within the same personality he’s always had. The way Go Set A Watchman overturns the mythos of Atticus Finch is as deliberate a plot point as anything that happens in To Kill A Mockingbird. In other words, this is a sequel, even if it wasn’t originally written as one. Read by itself, Go Set A Watchman is a good, if somewhat conventional, book about a woman coming to terms with the illusions of her childhood.

But read in the way I’m suggesting, as a sequel, this is a heartbreaking tale, much sadder than the author could have possibly intended. Lee no doubt wrote Go Set A Watchman meaning to disenchant the legend of a certain father’s goodness, the subject of the book’s first few chapters. What Lee actually achieves, by way of the dubious publication of this book, is almost to undermine goodness itself, or at least one of the all-time classic American moral archetypes. The book involves Scout Finch, now grown and going by her given name, Jean Louise. She is a woman in her late 20s, who returns from New York to her family home in small-town Alabama to find that everything has changed. Her story is both uneventful and full of metaphor and meaning, in the way most visits home seem to be.

She reconsiders the marriage proposals of her sometime sweetheart, Henry Clinton; she fights with her snobbish Aunt Alexandra, who is given a much more central role in Watchman than she had in Mockingbird; she looks in on her old caretaker, Calpurnia; and she remembers her childhood friend, Dill, and her brother, Jem, now dead from a sudden heart attack, in flashback scenes. The real reason for Jean Louise’s visit is to check in on her aging father, Atticus, a locally famous lawyer and former civil servant. His arthritis has slowed him down somewhat and made him more fragile, but he’s the same old Atticus, ever gracious and brimming over with homespun charm. That is, until a painful revelation. Atticus figures in Jean Louise’s life in much the same way he has for generations of readers of To Kill A Mockingbird, as a paradigm of morality. “Integrity, humor, and patience were the three words for Atticus Finch,” she says during one of the novel’s many flashbacks to her childhood days.

But the unshakability of his character, and thus her own sense of right and wrong, is cast into serious doubt when Jean Louise follows Henry and Atticus to listen in on a Citizen’s Council meeting. From the same courthouse balcony where young Scout had watched her father defend a wrongly accused black man, Jean Louise now watches both Atticus and Henry sit beside a guest speaker who spews horrible, racist rhetoric. Both Henry and Atticus seemingly sit in tacit assent. Jean Louise is devastated. For the rest of the novel, she views her beloved Maycomb County through a grotesque funhouse mirror. In a most heart-breaking passage after Atticus calls her by her childhood name, she thinks to herself, “Don’t you ever call me that again. You who called me Scout are dead and in your grave.” Her anger soon turns to self-reflection. A good portion of the novel deals with a sort of inward emotional inventory. Did she repress a racism that had always been there, or did her family change over the years? At one point in this rumination, she decides she must be to blame.

“My aunt is a hostile stranger… Hank is insane, and Atticus—something’s wrong with me, it’s something about me.” Finishing Go Set A Watchman, I was left questioning how to think about the novel. Its power is undeniable, but that power also seems like the product of an unnatural experiment. Lee’s writing is in fairly good form, that is, apart from some dialogue that runs on too long and some awkward phrasings that no doubt would have been cleaned up, had the manuscript been allowed the normal editing process. (Lee’s literary executor has said in an interview that the novel required only light copy editing, which now seems another piece of evidence that the publication of the novel was a rush job predicated on a pay out.) Then again, any consideration of the novel’s quality seems insignificant in light of what the fact of it means—the death by inches of a great character, because someone decided to play fast and loose with an artist’s best intentions. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee (Hardcover): Booksamillion.com: Books Reviewed in: Publishers Weekly, page . Review Date: 2015-07-20 Reviewer: Staff The editor who rejected Lee's first effort had the right idea.

The novel the world has been waiting for is clearly the work of a novice, with poor characterization (how did the beloved Scout grow up to be such a preachy bore, even as she serves as the book's moral compass?), lengthy exposition, and ultimately not much story, unless you consider Scout thinking she's pregnant because she was French-kissed or her losing her falsies at the school dance compelling. The book opens in the 1950s with Jean Louise, a grown-up 26-year-old Scout, returning to Maycomb from New York, where she's been living as an independent woman. Jean Louise is there to see Atticus, now in his seventies and debilitated by arthritis. She arrives in a town bristling from the NAACP's actions to desegregate the schools. Her aunt Zandra, the classic Southern gentlewoman, berates Jean Louise for wearing slacks and for considering her longtime friend and Atticus protégé Henry Clinton as a potential husband—Zandra dubs him trash.

But the crux of the book is that Atticus and Henry are racist, as is everyone else in Jean Louise's old life (even her childhood caretaker, Calpurnia, sees the white folks as the enemy). The presentation of the South pushing back against the dictates of the Federal government, utilizing characters from a book that was about justice prevailing in the South through the efforts of an unambiguous hero, is a worthy endeavor. Lee just doesn't do the job with any aplomb. The theme of the book is basically about not being able to go home again, as Jean Louise sums it up in her confrontation with Atticus: "there's no place for me anymore in Maycomb, and I'll never be entirely at home anywhere else." As a picture of the desegregating South, the novel is interesting but heavy-handed, with harsh language and rough sentiments: "Do you want them in our world?" Atticus asks his daughter. The temptation to publish another Lee novel was undoubtedly great, but it's a little like finding out there's no Santa Claus.

Press Releases Details Press Releases Details Press release RECENTLY DISCOVERED NOVEL FROM HARPER LEE, AUTHOR OF TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, is thrilled to announce it has acquired North American rights to a newly discovered novel by Harper Lee, beloved author of To Kill a Mockingbird. The novel, which Lee titled Go Set a Watchman will be published on July 14th, 2015. The deal was negotiated by Michael Morrison, President and Publisher of HarperCollins US General Books Group and Canada, via Harper Lee's lawyer, Tonja Carter. Harper Lee says, "In the mid-1950s, I completed a novel called Go Set a Watchman. It features the character known as Scout as an adult woman and I thought it a pretty decent effort. My editor, who was taken by the flashbacks to Scout's childhood, persuaded me to write a novel from the point of view of the young Scout. I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told. I hadn't realized it had survived, so was surprised and delighted when my dear friend and lawyer Tonja Carter discovered it.

After much thought and hesitation I shared it with a handful of people I trust and was pleased to hear that they considered it worthy of publication. I am humbled and amazed that this will now be published after all these years." Go Set a Watchman is set during the mid-1950s and features many of the characters from To Kill a Mockingbird some twenty years later. Scout (Jean Louise Finch) has returned to Maycomb from New York to visit her father, Atticus. She is forced to grapple with issues both personal and political as she tries to understand her father's attitude toward society, and her own feelings about the place where she was born and spent her childhood. After To Kill a Mockingbird was published by J. B. Lippincott in 1960, Harper Lee set aside Go Set a Watchman and never returned to it. The original manuscript of the novel was considered to have been lost until fall 2014, when Tonja Carter discovered it in a secure location where it had been affixed to an original typescript of To Kill a Mockingbird. "I, along with millions of others around the world, always wished that Harper Lee had written another book.

And what a brilliant book this is. I love Go Set a Watchman, and know that this masterpiece will be revered for generations to come," says Michael Morrison. Jonathan Burnham, Senior Vice President and Publisher, Harper, says, "This is a remarkable literary event. The existence of Go Set a Watchman was unknown until recently, and its discovery is an extraordinary gift to the many readers and fans of To Kill a Mockingbird. Reading in many ways like a sequel to Harper Lee's classic novel, it is a compelling and ultimately moving narrative about a father and a daughter's relationship, and the life of a small Alabama town living through the racial tensions of the 1950s." Go Set a Watchman will be published in the UK and Commonwealth by William Heinemann, an imprint of Penguin Random House Inc. ABOUT HARPER LEE Harper Lee was born in 1926 in Monroeville, Alabama. She attended Huntingdon College and studied law at the University of Alabama. She is the author of To Kill a Mockingbird and has been awarded numerous literary awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

ABOUT HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS HarperCollins Publishers is the second largest consumer book publisher in the world, with operations in 18 countries. With nearly two hundred years of history and more than 65 unique imprints around the world, HarperCollins publishes approximately 10,000 new books every year, in over 30 languages, and has a print and digital catalog of more than 200,000 titles. Writing across dozens of genres, HarperCollins authors include winners of the Nobel Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Newbery and Caldecott Medals and the Man Booker Prize. HarperCollins, headquartered in New York, is a subsidiary of News Corp and can be visited online at corporate.HC.com . What the critics are saying about Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman' - LA Times What the critics are saying about Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman' 'Go Set A Watchman' Joe Raedle / Getty Images Jennie Hausler waits to pay for a copy of "Go Set a Watchman" at the Books and Books store on Tuesday in Coral Gables, Fla.

Jennie Hausler waits to pay for a copy of "Go Set a Watchman" at the Books and Books store on Tuesday in Coral Gables, Fla. (Joe Raedle / Getty Images) Dave Lewis After five decades, readers are finally returning to Maycomb, the fictional Alabama town of Harper Lee’s beloved 1960 novel “To Kill a Mockingbird,” only to find one of its most famous residents nearly unrecognizable. Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” hits shelves Tuesday, and the buzz — which already has been at a fever pitch for weeks — has gone into overdrive with the arrival of the first reviews. It came as a surprise to many critics that the Atticus Finch of “Watchman” — written and shelved in 1957, before Lee radically transformed the book into “Mockingbird” — is a segregationist bigot who disparages the NAACP and once attended a Klan rally. Has that revelation (and others) tarnished the inspirational idealism of “To Kill a Mockingbird”? And, more broadly, does “Watchman” live up to “Mockingbird’s” legacy? (David L.

Ulin) “Promise, however, remains the operative word,” he contends, “for ‘Go Set a Watchman’ is an apprentice effort, and falls apart in the second half.” Noting that some descriptive passages are nearly identical to those found in “Mockingbird,” Ulin concludes that the book is “most interesting as a literary artifact” that “suggests a vivid set of contradictions, as much between the author and the character as between the character and himself.” The Guardian's Mark Lawson takes an opposing view, noting, “Regardless of whether the new book is regarded as Mockingbird 2 or Mockingbird 1.0, it is, in most respects, a new work, and a pleasure, revelation and genuine literary event, akin to the discovery of extra sections from T S Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land’ or a missing act from ‘Hamlet’ hinting that the prince may have killed his father.” Harper Lee's 'Go Set a Watchman': Keep this in mind when you're reading it "Go Set a Watchman” offers readers a darker side to Atticus Finch, the beloved moral center of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Keep it all in context, Los Angeles Times Book Critic David L.

Ulin explains in this video. "Go Set a Watchman” offers readers a darker side to Atticus Finch, the beloved moral center of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Keep it all in context, Los Angeles Times Book Critic David L. Ulin explains in this video. See more videos Former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey writes in the Guardian of the book's useful historical context. “ ‘Watchman’ is compelling in its timeliness,” she writes.

“During the historical moment in which the novel takes place, in states such as Georgia and South Carolina, legislators had begun to authorize the raising of the Confederate flag over the statehouse or the incorporation of it into the design of state flags as a reaction and opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision — thus inscribing the kind of white Southern anxiety dramatized in Lee’s novel.” MORE: 23 fiction books you'll want to read — and share — this summer The Independent’s Arifa Akbar calls “Watchman” a “rough diamond,” adding that “it is not a finely written story,” and that it “reads as a ‘good’ first draft which Lee has refused to rework.” Despite its jagged edges, “Watchman” is, according to Akbar, “the more radical, ambitious and politicised of the two novels Lee has now published.” Critics have expressed shock at the fact that the Atticus readers grew to love has been recast as a racist.

Writing in the New York Times, Michiko Kakutani notes that “ ‘Mockingbird’ suggested that we should have compassion for outsiders like Boo [Radley] and Tom Robinson, while ‘Watchman’ asks us to have understanding for a bigot named Atticus.” Akbar likewise laments, “we will never be able to read ‘Mockingbird’ in the same way again, and never see Atticus in the same light again. It is the end of innocence for that novel, and its simple idealism.” Time Magazine’s Daniel D’Addario acknowledges that “Watchman” is “alienating from the very start,” but suggests that Atticus’ bigoted worldview isn’t as much of a 180 as some are suggesting. “Atticus isn’t — never was — a bland fighter for what is empirically right,” he writes.

“His true heart, expressed in a lengthy debate with Jean Louise, actually squares neatly with the paternalistic attitude Atticus takes towards black people in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ and his occasionally overwrought compassion for his racist white neighbors.” Over at Entertainment Weekly, Tina Jordan gives the book a D+ , damning it with four simple words: “ ‘Watchman’ is a mess." She notes that though it “has a few stunning passages, it reads, for the most part, like a sluggishly-paced first draft, replete with incongruities, bad dialogue, and underdeveloped characters, because it is a first draft — of Mockingbird.' " Readers may be further dismayed by the surprising fate of another of “Mockingbird’s” major characters (there may not be much point trying to stay spoiler-free at this point, but we won’t tell you who), adding to the tome’s dark tone.

The Wall Street Journal’s Sam Sacks calls it “a distressing book, one that delivers a startling rebuttal to the shining idealism of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ This story is of the toppling of idols; its major theme is disillusion.” For readers, he adds, the new book “will be a test of their tolerance and capacity for forgiveness. At the peak of her outrage, Jean Louise tells her father, ‘You’ve cheated me in a way that’s inexpressible.’ I don’t doubt that many who read this novel are going to feel the same way.” Maureen Corrigan's NPR review sums it up thusly: “Everybody who loves ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is going to read it, no matter what I or any other reviewer says about its literary quality, the bizarre transformation of Atticus or its odd provenance.

All I know for certain is that ‘Go Set a Watchman’ is kind of a mess that will forever change the way we read a masterpiece.” ALSO: Go Set a Watchman - Prequel to Mockingbird Denis Hart (8 Feb 2015) "Go Set a Watchman - Prequel to Mockingbird" Go Set a Watchman - Prequel to Mockingbird Some signs are unusual and come seemingly out of obscurity. So I thought that I would draw Dovesï¿½ attention to a new book from Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. I do not know a lot about the Mockingbird book, but most of us know the title of the book and a hit movie. To Kill a Mockingbird was released in 1960 - more details on the Mockingbird book and the new book are available in a CNN news item - link below. Harper Lee is primarily famous for the one Mockingbird book. What makes the new book very interesting is the title: Go Set a Watchman.

This title is, intentionally or otherwise, a quote from Isaiah 21:6: For thus hath the Lord said unto me, GO SET A WATCHMAN, let him declare what he seeth. Why is it a prequel to Mockingbird? The manuscript for this book was unexpectedly rediscovered, but was actually written in the mid 1950s and completed before Mockingbird. It has been waiting around 60 years to be released!! There are some follow-ons to this that are worth noting: mockers and scoffers and watchmen, in Isaiah 21 and Ezekiel 33. Scoffers and Mockers! In 2 Peter and Jude there are clear warnings about scoffers and mockers who will be evident in the last days, but the imminent Day of the Lord will bring these to account!! 2 Peter 3:2-4 (KJV) 2 That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, 3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming?

for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. Jude 1:17-19 (KJV) 17 But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; 18 How that they told you there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. 19 These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. Isaiah 21 (Amplified) - Called to be Watchers!! For thus has the Lord said to me: Go, set [yourself as] a watchman, let him declare what he sees. 8 And [the watchman] cried like a lion, O Lord, I stand continually on the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my station every night. 9 And he [the watchman] tells [what it foretells]: Babylon has fallen, has fallen! And all the graven images of her gods lie shattered on the ground [in my vision]! Watchman, what of the night? [How long till morning?] Guardian, what of the night?

12 The watchman said, The morning comes, but also the night. Ezekiel 33 (Amplified) - Called to be Warners!! Son of man, speak to your people [the Israelite captives in Babylon] and say to them, When I bring the sword upon a land and the people of the land take a man from among them and make him their watchman, 3 If when he sees the sword coming upon the land, he blows the trumpet and warns the people, 4 Then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and the sword comes and takes him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and the sword comes and takes any one of them, his blood will I require at the watchmanï¿½s hand. 7 So you, son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; therefore hear the word at My mouth and give them warning from Me. Warner Brothers ï¿½ the Warners!! Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.

(commonly called Warner Bros., Warners, or simply WB) is an American media company that makes film, television and music entertainment. As one of the major film studios , it is a subsidiary of Time Warner , with its headquarters in Burbank, California . Commenced in 1903 and honours four founding Warner Brothers. Perhaps Our God sometimes hides signs in plain sight. What is the name behind much film, television and others forms of entertainment - the WARNER brothers!! As Doves we are watching and warning!! Warner Brothers is a subsidiary of Time Warner - how appropriate ï¿½ we are trying to warn the Church and the World that the Day of the Lord and the Rapture are fast approaching!!! Behold He comes quickly!!! Maranatha!! Denis BBC - Culture - Go Set a Watchman: Book review US culture Go Set a Watchman: Book review With To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee created one of fiction’s greatest heroes – but has its sequel destroyed him? Lucy Scholes reads Go Set a Watchman to find out.

By Lucy Scholes 14 July 2015 Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird stands as a touchstone of heroism in the face of bigotry and injustice in the United States’ Depression-era Deep South. Atticus Finch, the lawyer who risks his and his family’s safety in his defence of Tom Robinson, an innocent black man accused of raping a white woman, has been idolised by readers since the novel’s publication in 1960, but by no-one more so than his own daughter Jean Louise Finch – ‘Scout’ – in whose 6-year-old eyes he could do no wrong. “Our gods are remote from us, Jean Louise,” her uncle counsels the now 26-year-old in Go Set a Watchman. “They must never descend to human level.” Mockingbird is a classic coming-of-age story, but Scout’s education in that book has nothing on that she undergoes in Lee’s much-anticipated ‘sequel’.

Having returned to Maycomb, Alabama 20 years after Robinson’s trial, she’s shaken to the very core to learn that her beloved and revered father, who once proffered the mantra “equal rights for all, special privileges for none”, is reading pamphlets entitled The Black Plague and espousing bigoted pro-segregation propaganda at citizens’ council meetings. Watchman is a book with baggage that it’ll never be able to offload Jean Louise, “color blind” since birth, is both understandably outraged and deeply wounded by what amounts to a complete loss of faith in the one person “she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted.” Since Atticus holds a similar position in the hearts and minds of so many readers, it’s unsurprising that this revelation has met with early criticism , but this deserves to be tempered by a reminder that there’s a paternalism in Atticus’ behavior in Mockingbird that doesn’t exactly scream civil rights activist. Looking back, perhaps this isn’t quite the shocking volte-face it’s being decried as. ‘Parallel universes’ Not, of course, that it needs defending if it is. This sort of comparison is equal parts inevitable and frustratingly pointless.

Watchman is a book with baggage that it’ll never be able to offload. Readers can diligently comb Mockingbird for traces of the origins of Atticus’ racism – the sympathy he expresses towards Mrs Dubose, the Finches’ neighbour who has no reservations about voicing her own racism; or the fact that he didn’t exactly go out on a limb for Robinson from the start (he was allocated the case) – or they can allow themselves to be convinced by his brother’s account of the complexities inherent in a white Southerner’s personal and political identity, and what they regard as fear-mongering by the NAACP in these, the early days of the civil rights movement. But given the backwards chronology of the novels’ genesis and publication – Watchman was written first but initially rejected by Lee’s publisher in 1957, who encouraged the author to turn her attention to an account of her protagonist’s childhood – ultimately it’s a moot point: these two Atticus Finches exist in parallel universes. As much as we might prefer Mockingbird’s (relatively – he’s already in his ’50s) youthful and fearless moral compass, Watchman’s fallen hero is the more interesting version.

His flaws suggest a complex man of fallible flesh and bone (it’s worth noting he’s also physically crippled with rheumatoid arthritis – an easy but powerful metaphor for his moral weakness) rather than a flawless hero. View image of Go Set a Watchman and To Kill a Mockingbird (Credit: Credit: Getty Images) This doesn’t mean that Watchman is a better book. It lacks the drama of Mockingbird’s famous set pieces, relies a little too heavily on overly lengthy lectures about race and politics, and simply doesn’t invite the same love for its characters (despite our familiarity with most of them). Lee’s editors made the right call when they suggested she abandon this first draft and turn her attention to Scout’s childhood. Despite being written in the less immediate and inviting third person, there are flashbacks to this time aplenty in Watchman, enough to convince that it’s here that the real story lies, especially when told through the innocent eyes of a child. This, of course, is precisely where the genius of Mockingbird lies; it teaches the injustices of racial inequality through the prism of a different set of black-and-white absolutes: a child’s clear-cut sense of right and wrong, fairness and unfairness.

‘More nuanced’ Fans of Mockingbird understandably want to know how saintly Atticus Finch, paragon of integrity and justness, turned into a cantankerous old bigot; but surely the more interesting question is how Lee transformed a character she initially envisaged as a cantankerous old bigot into a paragon of integrity and justness. In many ways it comes down to the different social and political eras in which the two stories are set. Despite the tranquility we see on the surface of small town life, Mockingbird depicts a time of cruel injustices and a world where everybody knows their place – Robinson, remember, is not guilty of willful ingress, he is the passive victim of circumstance and cruel fate. The world of Watchman, by comparison, is one of tumultuous social change, unsettling in part because the likes of the NAACP are actively encouraging black Americans to ask for and expect more. We saw the power of mob rule during the angry lynch mob scene in Mockingbird, the only difference now is that this time it’s Atticus himself who’s been swayed.

Watchman’s fallen hero is the more interesting version “Have you ever considered that men, especially men, must conform to certain demands of the community they live in simply so they can be of service to it?” Jean Louise’s uncle asks her, attempting to explain her father’s situation. The fact that he focuses on the circumstances of men here is important: Watchman quietly considers the difference between the sexes through its juxtaposition of the views of father and daughter. Where much of the dramatic tension of Mockingbird is to be found in the courtroom, here a similar battle of intellect and argument is waged in the privacy of the Finches’ own home. Jean Louise attacks Atticus for his abhorrent politics behind closed doors, rather than on a public stage for all the town to see. Although many will feel betrayed by Atticus’ transformation, on the flip-side, it’s heartening to know that Scout has negotiated the rocky road from “howling tomboy into a grown woman” and emerged just as spirited and open-minded as she was as a child. She’s a woman who wants to be more than a Southern belle, “churched to death, bridge-partied to death”. She has opinions and she isn’t afraid to make herself heard.

Whether feelings of disillusionment with Atticus or Watchman’s technical flaws will tarnish the prowess of Mockingbird, only time will tell. Separating the two novels intellectually is easily done; but to invest in this emotionally is a harder task. But while Mockingbird undoubtedly remains the literary superstar, as Atticus remains its hero, Watchman presents a more nuanced study of racial prejudice. In light of recent tensions in America – despite the passing of what we often assume is 60-odd years of progress – this is perhaps a more timely and important portrait than we would like to admit. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter .

Question: Go Set a Watchman is a sequel to which famous book?
Answer: TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD